I Finally Arrive at My Definitions of Science, Technology, and Religion

To define is to separate and, one hopes, to clarify. Sometimes, however, definitions also create problems. Do religion and science represent two clearly definable two things? 

In this post, I return to those questions and offer my answers.

This post again excerpted from my book

Peter Harrison has argued that some definitions that we take for granted have only existed in the past 300 years or so. In that sense they are arguably “modern”—i.e., post-Enlightenment—concepts. For that reason he would rather talk of the “territories” of religion and science, not their definitions. Referring to the historic alterations in defining science, Harrison writes on the shift from emphasizing an approach to focusing on what it produces: 

"Overstating the matter somewhat, in the Middle Ages scientific knowledge was an instrument for the inculcation of scientific habits of mind; now scientific habits of mind are cultivated primarily as an instrument for the production of scientific knowledge." Peter Harrison

Harrison then describes how views of religion have changed since the time of

Thomas Aquinas in the twelfth century: 

“Between Thomas’s time and our own, religio has been transformed from a human virtue into a generic something typically constituted by sets of beliefs and practices.” Peter Harrison

This prodigious and erudite work, which represents Harrison’s 2011 Gifford Lectures, is fundamentally discipline-changing and will influence how I describe these two terms in my reconstruction of historical American views on religion and science.

Nonetheless, Harrison repeatedly focuses on “beliefs and practices,” which is inadequate for grasping contemporary definitions of religion. True, one of the greatest minds in the sociology of religion, Émile Durkheim, offered this definition in his 1912 Elementary Forms of Religious Life: “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite in one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.” But a great deal has changed in the past 100 years in the study of religion, and any number of more recent commentators such as Robert Bellah, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Huston Smith, Clifford Geertz, Robert Orsi, and Stephen Prothero do not solely emphasize beliefs and practices. 

Prothero is perhaps clearest in presenting his “four Cs” of religion: 

“creed, cultus, code, and community.” (Stephen Prothero's four marks of a religion)

Obviously beliefs (“creeds”) and practices (“cultus”) can be found in this palette, but these two do not exhaust his list. Similarly, Orsi, in his ground-breaking The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith And Community In Italian Harlem, 1880–1950, coined the term lived religion as including “the work of social agents/actors themselves as narrators and interpreters (and reinterpreters) of their own experiences and histories, recognizing that the stories we tell about others exist alongside the many and varied story they tell of themselves.” At this point I’ll add myth or story—narratives about how the world works and our place in it—as central to what a religion does.

Religious narratives and practices form us. Or, put differently, as George Lindbeck pointed out in his brilliant The Nature of Doctrine, religious teachings do not simply express internal states of piety (the experiential-expressive model), but form how we experience life and the world. Lindbeck, appropriating the later Wittgenstein, summarized his cultural-linguistic alternative: 

“a religion can be viewed as a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought.” George Lindbeck

Finally, these comments lead to two related definitions—theology, “the systematic study and development of religious beliefs and theory,” and theologians, those who produce theology.

In addition, what I hope is clear then is that these scholars do not equate religion with belief in a supernatural being. Buddhism, as is commonly known, has many nontheistic forms and it is not even clear that the Buddha himself had much use for a god. Belief in God or many gods may of course be a component of religion in the sense that I’m using the word, but there’s much more. The scholarly definition of religion brings us much closer to spirituality in common parlance, especially among emerging adults who play a major role in this book and my methods, which makes it difficult to interpret “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” Roughly speaking, to be spiritual is to be religious in the academic study of religion.

From Harrison I’ve learned a sensitivity to the ways in which the terms religion (or religio) and science (or scientia) have changed during the past 300 years in the story I am telling. He thus highlights the problem of essentialism, which Joshua Reeves also raises, that there are enduring essences in religion and science, or, put another way, that these two are natural kinds; i.e., ones that exist in nature and not simply in the socially constructed world of human beings. 

Related to the issue of essentialism is the question Who speaks for a particular religion? I often tell my introductory to religion students that, in a lecture on Islam, for example, I’m offering general contours for the religion as a whole, but they shouldn’t think that this applies to every single 1.8 billion Muslims. If religion is a “thing,” then all who participate in this “thing” ipso facto agree. But it’s not that simple. Religion, like truth, resists simplicity.

Jettisoning essentialism can lead to significant problems, as Reeves admits,

"If one rejects essentialism—if one gives up the assumption that unique features unite science across time and disciplines—then there is no straightforward way to prove the 'scientific' nature of theological claims or to assert the cognitive parity of theology and science." Joshua Reeves

He’s right. Although essentialism makes a scholar’s life easier, it’s deficient. In addition to mourning the loss of essentialism, we cannot comprehend the relationship of science and religion solely as cognitive categories. And yet, even if I don’t swallow anti-essentialism whole in this book—or that we best grasp religion and science as sources of systematic knowledge (alluding to John Evans)—I note these critiques as a way to chasten any overly enthusiastic conclusions. And below I will even propose two working definitions.

Finally, before asserting that I can propose those definitions I will further complicate the binary mode of science and religion by gradually slipping in a third term (one that admittedly does not even make it into my title): technology, which is replacing elements of what has been defined as science in the minds of many. In agreement with the comments by Willem Drees, technology is increasingly central to the science and religion dialogue: “The practice of science is culturally and technologically embodied….” In studying the mindset of 18–30-year-olds, I have discovered that technology and science are closely related. That these two terms appear conjoined merits no particular power for determining their definitions. Nevertheless, we cannot comprehend Artificial Intelligence or genetic engineering, as two examples, except as both scientific and technological pursuits. 

Moreover, technology and science are actually quite close, and what affected the historical interaction of “science and religion” was not only Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, but also the development of geography and shipbuilding that brought the English and Spanish to the Americas and thus Darwin to the Galapagos.

With these considerations in mind I arrive at my working definitions—or, perhaps better, as heuristics—of my key terms. 

Science is “knowledge about or study of the natural world, framed in theories based on observation, which are tested through experimentation.” Science studies nature. 

Religion, which is an even trickier term than science, doesn’t just “study God,” but it can be defined as “the belief in God or in many gods or Ultimate Reality, as well as an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, sacred stories, and ethical guidelines used to relate to God, a plurality of gods, or Ultimate Reality.”

Finally I define technology as “the use of science in industry, engineering, etc. to invent useful things or to solve problems” and “a machine, piece of equipment, method, etc. that is created by the use of science.”

Which leads to a question: What do you think?

The Messiness of Community and Thus the Allure of Tech

One more excerpt from Mere Science and Christian Faith, now available. 

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          MIT professor Sherry Turkle defends the messiness of community. (“Messiness,” by

the way, is my word, not hers.) Part of her reasoning is that conversations in real time with real people can’t be manipulated like virtual interactions can be. Turkle describes a manager at HeartTech, a large Silicon Valley software firm, who left engineering for management. 

“I left my previous job because it was too predictable. I wanted to work with unpredictable systems [i.e., people]” (Silicon Valley software manager).

Turkle offers this advice: 

“Challenge a view of the world as apps” (Sherry Turkle)

—the idea that some app on our smartphone will lead us to the solution to all problems. “The app way of thinking starts with the idea that actions in the world will work like algorithms: Certain actions will lead to predictable results” (Reclaiming Conversation, 322-2). But human relationships are unpredictable, chaotic, and complex—that’s what makes them both frustrating and exultant.

This “app thinking” can affect us relationally and spiritually. We think that we can manage people neatly, and if things go awry, we simply shut down that person’s “app” or “doc.” But when we do this, we treat other human beings impersonally—like they’re simply an extension of our smart phone—and this may also alter the way we approach another personal relationship—namely, with God. To take it up a metaphysical notch, our relationship with God is also messy and unpredictable. The eternal, sovereign God of the Bible cannot be managed. To cite Mrs. Beaver as she describes Aslan the Christ figure in the Chronicles of Narnia, 

“He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion” (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 182). 

God is free, untamable, and not manageable by our phone apps. And maybe we are too.

Tech and Science: Have They Become One?

One more excerpt from Mere Science and Christian Faith, now available. 
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When teaching my Science and Religion class, I start by presenting key definitions, move

to Ian Barbour’s four-part typology for relating science and religion, examine the critical historical figures (Copernicus, Newton, Galileo, Darwin, Scopes, Collins, Dawkins, and so on), move into scientific and theological methods, and discuss how the Big Bang relates to the teaching about God’s creation of the world. During these lectures the class listens pleasantly and occasionally interacts with me. When I move on to nanobots, Kurzweil’s singularity, Ex Machina and The Matrix, the future of technology, and whether Skynet is possible, the students begin to sit up in their seats. They achieve the highest level of engagement for academic life in California: they “share.” They have much more to say here, or at least they believe they do. Technology fascinates in a way that pure science does not.

Why this shift? For emerging adults, technology is ubiquitous. They are digital natives. And even though I grew up about five miles from where Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs created the prototype of the Apple I on Sunday, June 29, 1975, I’m not a digital native. In fact, here’s a confession: the first time I typed on a computer was in graduate school. (When I offer my students that tidbit, the looks are priceless.) So, since technology has had an enduring presence in the lives of eighteen- to thirty-year-olds, it’s reasonable to conclude that technology and social media have significantly affected their psychological development and human flourishing. Technology and its use has had a massive import on their spiritual lives.

Even more significant, there’s a perception factor: These digital natives gravitate toward discussions of technology because they sense the presence of pressing life issues, whereas they often perceive “science” as heady and abstract. When I say that I study “religion and science,” I often get the response, “Oh that’s not for me. I’m not that brainy.” But it’s different when I ask students to think about whether being “wired in” to a smartphone produces anxiety, how virtual community affects “real” relationships, and so on. My experience is that emerging adults tend toward pragmatism over theoretical speculation over a question such as, “Does quantum physics offer a place for divine action?” It doesn’t resonate.

Purists want to distinguish science from technology. While I’m sensitive to the differences, I don’t believe this strategy works. Simply put, eighteen- to thirty-year-olds have only known a technologically saturated world. Therefore technology must be prominent in any discussion with them involving scientific and theological method, interactions with evolutionary biology, cosmology, and the like.

Technology, Us and Two Brilliant, Representative, and Antiphonal Voices

As I’ve written many times, technology can take us in both positive and negative directions. And there are brilliant voices for each.

      

First of all, consider the work of Sherry Turkle, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Now that’s an impressive title!) She wrote one of the definitive early books on Artificial Intelligence, The Second Self and has moved in an more concerned, even at times distressed, direction in her books, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from EachOther (2012) and Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talkin a Digital Age (2015). The latter emphasizes how technology invades and prevents true human community and gets in the way of authentic conversation and empathy.

      
I’m not always sure that technology and education always mix well together. Turkle would agree—she is, for example, fairly relentless, and simultaneously quite thoughtful, about the problems of distance learning. (MIT apparently tried all this out quite early, and she's not impressed.) I suppose I could summarize her by saying that human relationships, and thus teaching, are messy. And that's good—because, through the messiness, we learn invaluable skills. And tech can interrupt education in other ways. In my hometown,

there’s a phone app developed by Chico State grads, PocketPoints, which rewards its users if they turn off the phone during college classes. I have a friend—a younger friend at that—who visited my college classes and cannot help but notice that, during a quick stretch break I usually offer my students in the middle of lectures—the students quietly text their friends or check their social media instead of meeting the people right in their vicinity. He’s rather blunt at this: “Why wouldn’t these guys want to meet some of the beautiful women that surround them?”
      

Indeed. It’s probably because they feel anxious, more comfortable “connecting” virtually instead of in real time, with real people. And—though I doubt this is true in my classes—they’re probably a bit bored. Boredom and anxiety—that potent combination which together make the German word angst and the French version ennui—propel us toward our cell phones like the proverbial moths to flame. The little shot of dopamine that’s released as we are stimulated by the new scream has addictive qualities. And so we continue. And so it is particularly with emerging adults, who were given screens to quiet them as fussy babies. Such earlier training is sticky and recalcitrant. This persistent use of technology can lead to anxiety—for example, “cell phone addiction”—and emerging adults would seem to be the most vulnerable.

       
A moment ago I mentioned Turkle’s defense of the messiness of community. (“Messiness,” by the way, is my word, not hers.) Conversations in real time with real people can’t be manipulated to the same degree that virtual interactions can be. “One new manager at HeartTech, the large software company in Silicon Valley, moved there so he could leave engineering and try his hand at management. ‘I left my previous job because it was too predictable. I wanted to work with unpredictable systems [here he means people].’” She summarizes this by asserting that we must

 “Challenge a view of the world as apps”

—that some app on our smart phone leads us toward a seamless solution to all problems. “The app way of thinking starts with the idea that actions in the world will work like algorithms: Certain actions will lead to predictable results. But human relationships are unpredictable, chaotic, and complex—that’s what makes them both frustrating and exultant.

      
This “app thinking” can affect us relationally and spiritually. To take it up a metaphysical notch, our relationship with God is messy and unpredictable. The eternal, sovereign, God of the Bible cannot be managed. As C. S. Lewis put into the mouths of Mrs. Beaver as she describes Aslan the Christ figure in The Chronicles of Narnia, 

“He’s not a tame lion.”

On the other side, I’ve already noted how technology has historically served the Christian

church in its history. It also has broader implications according to its contemporary advocates. Researcher and technologist Jane McGonigal, in her 2010 TED talk “Gaming Can Make a BetterWorld," promotes the theory that computer games can actually lead to human community. (She’s also written SuperBetter: The Power ofLiving Gamefully, which demonstrates, if nothing else, that this tech revolution is going to involve making up new words.) McGonigal reveals that the world spends three billion hours a week playing online games—which shocks the audience—she then doubles down by asserting that we need to do more. How could this be the case? The problem solving skills of those virtual situations could be employed in solving real-world problems.

      
Naturally, almost all commercial forces see technological use by emerging adults as positive. Because it helps sell products. And generally, the power and material resources of marketing social media particularly and Internet use generally—and the devices that use them—is immense. And don’t we simply enjoy our smart phones? I do.

      
I know this sounded like I slipped back into the negative side of the ledger with tech. And that’s where my mind was—in addition to channeling my “say yes to no” approach around the time of that book’s publication—when I addressed a group of graduate students from the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapters of Stanford and Berkeley. My task was to inspire them with how to engage culture, particularly as formed by science, as bright, energetic, promising Christians. These people could change the world. That indeed sounds like a cliché. But the more I came to know these students, the more I thought it might be true.

      
I began my talks on Christian spirituality in today’s world with a scene from the film NachoLibre where Nacho, a cook at a Mexican monastery, is partnering with Stephen in a tag team free wrestling, or “luchador libre.” Nacho is naturally a man of faith, but Stephen denies any belief in God and declares, “I’m a man of science.” So this is a point of contention, about which Nacho feels fearful just before I fight against the team of “Satan’s Cavemen.” So, while Stephen is looking another direction, Nacho baptizes him. And my point (yes, I had one) is that often we often baptize science with our faith when scientists aren’t looking. And let’s not do that.

      
In later talks, I took on the problems of tech and the reasons to resist it. In and out of Ultimate frisbee games on a field nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains and around meals, some of the students quietly and thoughtfully resisted. Many, in fact, were involved in Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Stanford or the Center for Social Sector Leadershipat U.C. Berkeley. Or they were just making the world a better place. They indeed were the first people to introduce to me to information and communication technologies for development (or ICT4D). “Did you know that cell phones can help farmers find the best price—so they can survive—in poor African countries? Let me tell you about it.” “Have you heard about using solar power to help with hospitals in rural Nigeria?” “I’m working on a project to bring training to the poorest 1% of the world through media players and I think Pico projectors can offered training to stem the tide of pandemics. (Actually, that’s my friend Matt York’s mission and what his organization One Media Player Per Teacher, or OMPT, did to fight Ebola, but he could have been there too.) 

      
That retreat may have helped those IV grad students spiritually, but it was a game changer for me. Though tech can often be negative for rich people in the northern hemisphere, it can often make the difference between life and death for the poor in the southern hemisphere.

I close with my paraphrase, or perhaps adaption, of a saying from Jesus (see Mark 2:27), "Tech was made for us, not us for tech." Let's learn how to use it well.

A Reflection on Technology and Angst

I've been pondering again why so often we are so drawn to our smart phones instead of to other human beings.

MIT professor Sherry Turkle, author of both Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2012) and Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (2015) emphasizes (by my reading) how technology invades and prevents true human community. Tech often gets in the way of true conversation and empathy.

In my hometown, there’s a phone app developed by Chico State grads, PocketPoints, which rewards its users if they turn off the phone during college classes. As they state clearly on their website, 

“Phone addiction is a pervasive problem.” 

A friend—a younger friend at that—cannot help but notice that, during a quick stretch break I usually offer my students in the middle of lectures, the students quietly text their friends or check their social media instead of meeting the people right in their vicinity. He’s rather blunt at this: “Why wouldn’t these guys want to know all the gorgeous girls that are all around them?”

Or as Turkel puts it: 

"Texting offers just the right amount of access, just the right amount of control. She is a modern Goldilocks: for her, texting puts people not too close, not too far, but at just the right distance. The world is now full of modern Goldilockses, people who take comfort in being in touch with a lot of people whom they also keep at bay."

Indeed. We feel anxious about messy conversations in real time, with real people, and thus more comfortable “connecting” virtually. And—though I doubt this is true in my classes—my students are probably just a bit bored. 

Boredom and anxiety—that potent combination which together make the German word angst and the French version ennui—propel us toward our cell phones like the proverbial moth to flame. The little shot of dopamine that’s released as we are stimulated by the next scream has addictive qualities. And so we continue. Angst stimulates our flight toward cell phones. And so it is particularly with emerging adults, who were given screens to quiet them as fussy babies. Such earlier training is sticky and recalcitrant.

The lurking question is what will retrain us. But I'll leave that unanswered for now...